


clerical healing

by fruitbattery



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, coda for C2E45, cuddle puddle, jester needs love!!!, spoilers for e45
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-24 05:09:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17094500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fruitbattery/pseuds/fruitbattery
Summary: After their ordeal in the mage's mansion, the Mighty Nein are in desperate need of comfort, and of each other.





	clerical healing

**Author's Note:**

> Written before last night's episode came out (46).

Jester has never been good at dealing with her emotions. As a child, her mother’s business meant that she spent a lot of time on her own, and so had no one to process her fears with or to share her joy. Jester knows that her mother loved her, that she still loves her in fact, but the fact of the matter is that Jester has had to learn from a young age how to cloak her distress in cheeriness. So when she appears back on the Squalleater in a flash of green light, panting, soot-blackened, every limb shaking, she feels her face twist instinctually into a hopefully genuine tired smile. Instantly, as her friends appear around her, she sees the concerned crew of the Squalleater rushing towards them. She leans into Clay, suddenly exhausted.

As the group discusses the mysterious seven-day period that they’ve been gone, Jester feels her grin slipping. The tiny form of Nott on one side of her and Caduceus’s tall self on the other provide surprisingly little comfort. She feels shell-shocked, and tired, and like she just wants to go cry. When Beau asks her how she’s doing, she hears her own mouth make up some bullshit excuse, but it sounds far away. She turns her back on the group and trudges back down into the quarters of the ship.

Jester is curled up on the bed, painting another Traveler shrine into existence, when she hears a knock. Before she can answer, Beau steps into the room. Jester quickly looks back down at the page, coaxing the little statue out of it to clank to the floor. She feels, rather than sees, Beau’s eyes boring into the top of her head.

Eventually, Jester begrudgingly looks up. “What is it?” Her Nicodranas accent is thicker with emotion, and it brings her an intense wave of homesickness. 

Beau takes a step forward. “Look, now I’m not one to pry normally, but Clay told me I should check up on you. You got pretty beat up in that fight, and you are honestly a _terrible_ liar.” Blessedly, after she finishes speaking, Beau waits patiently. Jester closes the sketchbook and caps her paint. She flops down on her back on the bed and stares at the ceiling. The previous hour plays out in her mind on repeat. Jester is normally an incredibly optimistic person, but the calm rush of certainty that she was going to die had been very, very real. She sees the blue talons coming towards her again, feels the Traveler behind her as he lends his arm to push her shield up and save her life. She sees her friends disappearing one by one, sees Nott nearly felled by the terrible beast, feels herself stretching towards the orb that she knows will bring safely, but it’s getting farther away…

Beau watches Jester’s tiny frame curl onto her side and start to shake. Muffled sobs come from between her hands as she turns her back to Beau and releases a near-death’s worth of tears onto the pillow. Unsure what to do, Beau settles for placing a hand on Jester’s upturned shoulder and stroking with her thumb, brown against blue. Jester’s sobs redouble, but she does lean slightly back into Beau’s hand. 

Overwhelmed with the need to do _something_ , Beau finds herself climbing into the bed behind Jester and wrapping herself tightly against her friend’s back. Before long, Jester shifts so she’s facing Beau and buries her head in Beau’s shoulder. Beau hasn’t comforted someone like this in a long, long time, but she finds it comes naturally. 

Jester’s horrible, heart-wrenching sobs eventually turn to quiet sniffles and hiccups, and Beau stays on the bed with her as she dreams.

***

Caduceus is _miserable_.

He’s currently staring out at the sea, passing by at a fair clip now that the sails have been repaired. He can sense the presence of one ungodly sphere on the table behind him, and knows that another two are now permanently traveling with Fjord. He sighs and turns his back on the ocean, sinking onto the deck with his back against the railing. 

He is _tapped._ Nothing that the group had done in the dragon’s den had gone according to plan, let alone the fact that they had FOUGHT a DRAGON in the first fucking place. Mother above. What had he gotten himself into, agreeing to come with these people? _They need you, Clay,_ says a voice in his head that he recognizes as hit mother. _You’ve been doing such a wonderful job keeping them safe. The world needs more people like you._

Caduceus feels a comforting hand on his shoulder, and looks up to see Fjord standing over him. Wordlessly, the captain holds out a hand. Caduceus grabs it, and together they pull him to his feet. Fjord looks injured and browbeaten, his normal easy grace made heavy and effortful by the recent ordeal. “What do you need right now, Clay?” Caduceus can hear the genuine question in Fjord’s voice.

“Well, honestly, I need to sleep, and I need to know that the others are OK.” He thinks for a minute. “Well, really, what I need is to make them OK. Making other people better seems to be my specialty, after all.” 

Fjord doesn’t miss the slight bitterness in Caduceus’s tone, but he’s not gonna push it. Not in light of what just happened. Instead, he offers Clay a job.

“D’ya want to check on Jester? She’s pretty not-OK at the moment, it seems.”

Caduceus nods, and together he and Fjord descend the stairs to their quarters. Coming to Jester and Beau’s room, he can see that the door is partially open. With a glance at Fjord, Caduceus leans in.

Beau and Jester are curled together on the bed, as tightly as Caduceus thinks it’s possible for humans to be. Jester is clutching her sketchbook and looks fast asleep, an assumption that Beau confirms when she looks up and sees the two of them standing there. She brings her hand to her lips in a “Shh!” motion, but gestures for the two of them to enter anyway. Caduceus nods backs out of the room, a plan forming in his head. He motions to Fjord and heads off in the direction of their own room.

***

Caleb smells like smoke and ozone and old, old books. With Nott’s face pressed into his coat like it is, that’s all she can smell. She feels Caleb’s arms holding her tightly to him, almost suffocating her, but it’s nice. She feels safe. She also feels “ow ow OW,” and “I can barely move,” but she suspects that that has more to do with the dragon than it does with Caleb. 

Nott’s not sure how much time passes before she can next form a coherent thought. She and Caleb are back in their room, she on the bed and he on the floor. He’s frowning down at a book in his lap, and doesn’t seem to have noticed that she’s conscious. She feels marginally better, but she also feels terribly alone. For maybe the first time in their adventures together, she wants to be with more people than Caleb. So she slips out of bed, pattering on tiny feet out the cracked-open door. Caleb, predictably, doesn’t notice; he’s too absorbed in his learning to hear the soft noises of socked feet on wood. 

Nott makes her way down the hall to Jester’s room. She’s not terribly smart, but even she is perceptive enough to notice when something’s off, and Jester is not all right. Her body was too tense against Nott when she hugged her waist earlier, and the way she wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes as she insisted she was fine… well, Nott is worried. She scampers up to the door and pushes it open, seeing the curled up forms of her friends on the bed. Beau acknowledges her with a small nod, and Nott climbs up on the bed with them. She settles behind the crook of Beau’s knees, catlike, letting the sounds of the two other breathing beings be a comfort to her.

Of course, Caleb finds her before too long, like he always does. He appears in the doorway to the small bedroom, flingers ink-stained and dented from using his quill too long, back hunched, eyes distant. But he gives a small smile when he sees Nott, and she extends him her long hand. Almost instinctually, he grasps it back, and just stands there, watching over his dozing friends, making no move to join them.

***

Jester wakes to the scraping of something heavy moving down the hallway towards her room. Beau’s muscular arm slung over her prevents her from bolting up, but her heart rate does quicken until she sees Fjord’s head poke around the door. He backs into the room strangely and awkwardly, and Jester sees that he and Caduceus have been dragging another bed into the room. As they jam themselves in, she sees Yasha behind them carrying another bed by herself. 

The three of them go about setting the beds up to create a megabed, and Jester’s heart begins, slowly, to swell. All of her best friends are now in the room with her, expending effort to make _her_ feel comfortable. She gently moves Beau off of her and sits up as the megabed is completed. It takes up almost the entire room, and everyone immediately starts to assemble on it. Caduceus stands at the foot of it looking awkward until Jester looks at him and pats the top of the middle bed. He crawls up willingly and leans against the wall, seeming surprised but pleased when Jester and Nott curl into him on either side. Caleb moves in so Nott is in his lap, and Fjord lies down behind Caleb, his feet tangling with Clay’s. Yasha leaves the room as Beau resumes her position at Jester’s back, before returning with an armful of more blankets. After the blankets are distributed, Yasha makes to leave again, but a death glare from Beau combined with a forceful bed-pat draws her back. She leans against the wall behind Beau, legs crossed out in front of her and pressed against Beau’s back.

***

Yasha still isn’t sure what the hell happened during the week the group has been gone, but most of her curiosity flees her mind the minute they show up. They’re beaten and bloody, soot-blackened, and all leaning on each other for support. As they appear out of thin air, some come out running frantically and some come out stumbling. Nott appears on the verge of collapsing, covered in great bloody scratches and clinging to her crossbow for dear life. Yasha starts up from her table, and from behind her, she hears Marius clattering towards them. She doesn’t care though, because _her friends are back._ Sure, Nott looks near death, but she’s been there before, and they have Jester and Caduceus. She glances over towards the two and her heart skips a beat. 

Jester is leaning into Caduceus for support, her shield arm dangling limply. Her blue skin is marred with blood, and her dress is singed. Her face is already plastered with the situation-appropriate exhausted half-smile that Yasha knows well from their time with the Shepherds. She wants to go to Jester, to comfort her like she always tried to in the dungeon, but their other friends are already closing in around her as they appear. She watches as they dish out the money to the crew for repairs and trudge downstairs, hardly seeming to notice her presence. 

She looks around at the crew, but they seem just as puzzled as she does. Galan motions her downstairs after them, and she decides it can’t hurt to go.

***

Now on the bed, Yasha still doesn’t know what to do. She sees Jester and Beau clinging onto each other for dear life. She sees Caleb seeking comfort from everyone he can reach. She sees Caduceus awkwardly filling the role of mother hen in the middle of the pile. She decides that for now, the Mighty Nein can take care of themselves.

_Whatever this is_ , she thinks, _we’ve got it_.


End file.
